Meetings – you either love them or loathe them. But either way, these are a critical part of any business, including the allied health business. I want you to think about how you hold meetings in your business, the frequency, the length, and most especially the quality. Do your team members leave with clarity, focus and optimism after your meetings or do they leave unmotivated and bored?

It’s time for you to power pack your meetings and turn them from lonesome to awesome! I want to give you some ideas on how your allied health business meetings could be, should be and would be different from the rest.

Role of meetings in an organisation

A meeting helps you, as a business owner, set the organisational culture in your business and help establish roles of your leadership team. It defines you as a leader and a business owner, and is a way for you to communicate with your team in a consistent and clear manner.

Frequency, duration and quality of meetings

From the very start, you must have a rhythm in your meetings. How do you do that? If possible, hold them on the same day, time and place to help your team anticipate it.

Meeting durations may vary depending on your need. Feel free to break the 60, 90 or 120 minute meeting rules. Do what works for you and your team.

Create a formal structure for your meetings to help you power through them. You will also need to define the purpose of the meeting so that everyone has clarity and will be able to prepare for it.

You will need to encourage participants and attendees to take down notes and have ownership on ideas and actions. This will help them be accountable and complete their tasks on time with clarity. This will also allow you to be able to follow up with them.

Minutes are a good way to share the information discussed but instead of emailing it to everyone, store them in a place where everyone can access it at any time.

Benefits of meetings

Meetings are an effective vehicle for constant communication with your team. It helps you get rid of hearsay, incorrect second-hand information and leaving things unsaid. It puts you, as a business owner, in the driver’s seat and consolidates your credibility as an inspired leader and disciplined business manager. So never ever underestimate your role in leading these meetings.

Lead the meeting, don’t do all the talking. Use a coaching approach, facilitate and ask more. This will be a way for your team to learn more, be updated with what’s happening, brainstorm for solutions to challenges, and become more accountable on their tasks.

If you give your team members a voice to air their ideas, thoughts, and solutions, it may increase their participation, engagement and overall accountability to what needs to be done.

It is so important that every team member leaves a meeting with notes, clarity, learning, insight, inspiration, optimism and a clear path on who’s going to do what and when. The goal is for the team to become future-focused and moving in the same direction as you.

Overall, I really think that meetings are a remarkable way of shared accountability and shared visioning. I am a huge fan of meetings. I honestly get a little jumpy when I hear that these opportunities are not optimised and that meetings are a little dull, repetitive, unfocused and way too clinical.

I challenge you today to revisit your current meeting structure, function and frequency. Ask yourself whether or not there are some improvements you can make, not only from your point of view as a business owner, but from your team’s point of view as well.